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Is there an API for reading, adding, and editing recipes?

Hello, I make an aftermarket pellet grill controller that has a web app interface. I wanted to add a recipe section to the web app so users could add and edit their recipes directly from the app and share them with the world. The app can display the Cookbook wiki but it is a bit too complicated to add recipes using the templates. I am not a wiki expert so I may be missing another way to manage recipes. Any thoughts? Mcranepage (discuss • contribs) 13:53, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Mcranepage! Are you asking if there's a way to add/edit Wikicookbook recipes directly from your web app? If I'm understanding correctly, you can read them but not edit them well—is that correct? —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 20:44, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Hello, @Kittycataclysm, yes that is correct. My understanding of adding a recipe is that the user has to copy pieces of various recipe template parts, paste them into a new recipe page, figure out the right category(s) for the recipe, then there are a few visual editor type tools that he/she can use to edit the recipe parts before submitting it. I was hoping to simplify the process by creating a form in the web app that the user could fill out then when he/she saves the recipe, the web app will send the recipe to the Cookbook wiki as an xml or json object. I am open for suggestions. Mcranepage (discuss • contribs) 16:15, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

You can use mw:API:Edit to edit wikis. If you want users to edit in their own names (you probably should), you’ll also need mw:OAuth/For Developers in a web app (or develop a gadget or user script instead, which runs on en.wikibooks.org and thus can directly edit in the current user’s name – even if the user isn’t logged in, which isn’t possible using OAuth). Of course, these are general APIs and don’t know anything about how the cookbook works, but if I understand correctly, you plan to write exactly the cookbook-specific parts anyway. —Tacsipacsi (discuss • contribs) 20:56, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Hello @Tacsipacsi, Perfect! Thank you for the information. Mcranepage (discuss • contribs) 18:26, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Omelette

Take two eggs and crack into bowl/cup add dried parsley leaves add into eggs,add a pinch of salt and pepper mix well add bread toast.

Light stove heat to medium temperature wait 3 minutes and flip put on low heat take a plate and take a cup and pour soda

Enjoy 😘

Tkzeemoondreamer07 (discuss • contribs) 08:47, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Root vegetables recipes

Years ago I had a heavenly root vegetable dish. I even had the recipe for it, but I lost it. It was simply a mixture of root veggies, such as rutabaga, Yam, carrots , or any other winter veggie, fried then cooked on low heat. The trick is the spices: onions, garlic, pepper and salt are standard, but I also remember cumin, coriander, turmeric and ginger which are even better in their herb form.

My problem is I am not one of those cooks who can simply whip it up. Without a recipe telling me how much, how long and exactly how, I am lost.

Where can I find recipes for root vegetables? Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (discuss • contribs) 22:34, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech I'd recommend taking a look at Category:Root vegetable recipes. —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 23:04, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Wow, @Kittycataclysm, what a wealth of recipes! I am going to try Cookbook:Atkilt Wat (Ethiopian Cabbage and Potato Stew) which is probably pretty close, though different than the recipe I had in mind. Ottawahitech (discuss • contribs) 17:34, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Something in progress at Wikisource, and a Wikidata ish suggestion?

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:TM-10-412_(2003).pdf

Not all of it would be useful to the Cookbook, but it got me thinking.. Is there a way to convert the ingredients into a Wikidata code? The thought was that as the ingredients are presumably a standard naming, they should be translatable to a Wikidata item, the relavant Q codes then being possible to use in other recepies on the Cookbook here? ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 01:29, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

Hi @ShakespeareFan00! Can you elaborate a bit more on what you mean by converting the ingredients into a Wikidata code? I'm not entirely sure I understand what you mean and what the use case would be. Thanks! —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 19:16, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

The thought was that a specfic ingredient could be given a Wikidata identifier, thus making it possible using data tools to find for example recipes linked to a specfic ingredient, by querying the links that identifier had cross wiki. Another thought was that common recipes could also be given identfiers. Thusly a Cookbook recipe converted to Wikidata becomes a set of ingredient codes and quantity qualifiers, making it easier to search for say all Egg recipes (ID:Q93189 for egg) using cheese (ID:Q217525).. By looking at the properties and their contents?

Other than the method TM-10-412 is already technically a recipe dataset, which suggested the approach. ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 15:31, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

By having ingredients as Wikidata items, other data properties could be attached as well, like nutritional data or allergen flags? ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 15:31, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

To confirm, you're suggesting that we link each ingredient in a recipe's ingredient list to a wikidata item? If that's the case, I'm not sure that would be viable since it would entail outlinks, which are not supposed to be used, and it would take the place of linking to our existing cookbook ingredient pages. Additionally, there is already a native way to do the kind of searching you mention. For the example of finding recipes using egg and cheese, you would just use the advanced search function to search for pages in the categories "Egg recipes" and "Cheese recipes". Am I understanding you correctly, and does this make sense? 19:37, 6 March 2025 (UTC) —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 19:37, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

We have ingredient pages locally already, Great :). Could these be lnked with Wikidata items? ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 16:42, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Cuisine titling

Migrating discussion here from User talk:Kittycataclysm#More Table of Content Edits. Text by User:MediaKyle reads:

On the Cuisine titling, it actually seems like Cookbook:Cuisine of the Mediterranean and Cookbook:East Asian cuisines are the only ones that don't follow the naming scheme, i.e. "Cookbook:African Cuisine", and I think that shorter titles are preferable where it makes sense.

—Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 22:57, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

@MediaKyle If you look at Category:Cuisines, you'll see that the vast majority of the cuisines follow the "cuisine of _____" format. I'm not necessarily opposed to changing everything over to "_____ cuisine" for brevity, but I did just want to note what the current trend is. —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 19:15, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Looks like "___ Cuisine" is for countries or continents, whereas "Cuisine of ___" is for specific countries, or provinces/states. I think that's a good format. MediaKyle (discuss • contribs) 11:14, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Broad regional cuisine pages

Migrating discussion here from User talk:Kittycataclysm#More Table of Content Edits. Text by User:MediaKyle reads:

On your note about East Asian Cuisine, I actually had the same thought after going through the cuisine pages. Having three separate pages for different kinds of Asian cuisine does seem a little silly, doesn't it? Do you think it might be better to combine all of them under one "Asian Cuisine", but put the different locales under separate headers?

—Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 22:59, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Introductory section

Migrating discussion here from User talk:Kittycataclysm#More Table of Content Edits. Text by User:MediaKyle reads:

You're right that it looks a little awkward to have the header as Introduction when there's a page called introduction. I still think that to say "Introductory Matter", or "Front Matter" as you mentioned, is a little long-winded and reflects a more academic tone than needed for a cookbook. Upon further reflection, I think maybe rather than worrying about the header at this point, we should perhaps think about trying to compile all of those short introductory type pages into one comprehensive introductory page. Then we likely won't even need a header for it on the ToC.

—Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 23:01, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

@MediaKyle unfortunately, I don't actually think it would make sense to merge these sections. They all discuss fundamentally different topics, each of which I think deserves its own chapter. While they're not particularly well-fleshed-out at the moment, I'd like to expand each of them properly. —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 19:24, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

TOC redesign

Migrating discussion here from User talk:Kittycataclysm#More Table of Content Edits. Text by User:MediaKyle reads:

The ToC is definitely a bit cluttered, and it bothers me too that there's a real lack of consistency across whether the wikilinks lead to a page or a category. I'm not sure how I would feel about cutting away too much of the navigation from it, though, because just about every page on there does have a reason to be there, it's just that they're not presented very nicely. Some of it can certainly get nested or combined though. I'll play around with it over the next few days in my sandbox as well and let you know if I come up with anything.

Note: After writing this, I realized what you were getting at about slashing away some of the subpages. Maybe we can come up with a system where all of those subpages are under their main subpage rather than on the ToC. For example, all the Cuisines are under Cookbook:Cuisines, all techniques under Cookbook:Cooking Techniques, to keep the subpages off the main ToC.

—Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 23:03, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Subcategorizing recipes

Migrating discussion here from User talk:Kittycataclysm#More Table of Content Edits. Text by User:MediaKyle reads:

The first thing on my to-do list once my autoconfirmed comes through is to start subcategorizing all of the recipes so that they're all nicely sorted in the category trees. When you have a chance, I'd love to hear your thoughts on what we should use as the standard naming for categories. Once we determine this, I think we can also take the liberty of updating the cookbook MoS to reflect it.

—Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 23:05, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Category structure

Migrating discussion here from User talk:Kittycataclysm#Cookbook. Text by User:MediaKyle reads:

Maybe it would be beneficial to try to put together some sort of a Cookbook MOS regarding category structure? It's kind of all over the place right now. Using your bread example, would it perhaps make more sense to have Category:Bread recipes and Category:Recipes using bread? There would be no ambiguity with just those two categories, but when you add the extra Category:Recipes for bread, that's when things start getting a little whacky. What do you think? Either that or get rid of Category:Bread recipes and keep the other two. But one of these categories gotta go, I reckon

I see you already had the same thought as me. I think all categories should include "for" or "using". Take for example, Category:Recipes for pancakes as opposed to Category:Pancake recipes. Well obviously there's no recipes using pancakes. But for something like Category:Recipes for gravy, there may also be a need for Category:Recipes using gravy. The lack of consistency in this regard means the only way to achieve consistency across the categories is by changing them over to that format.

—Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 23:09, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

I agree with you that it doesn't make sense to have all three constructions. For the least ambiguity, I would be perfectly happy to go with only the "Recipes using _____" and "Recipes for _____" going forward. —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 19:27, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

I've been thinking about this more and I reckon we're going to have to put more thought into this before we make any sort of wide-scale change. For many recipes, it just doesn't make sense to change them to that format. For example, Category:Cake recipes or Category:Sushi recipes. If we renamed everything to "Recipes for ___" it would make it a little harder to find the category you're looking for in a list, to no real benefit. I'm really not sure what the best way to do it would be. MediaKyle (discuss • contribs) 11:31, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Could you elaborate a bit on what you mean by making it harder to find a category in a list? I actually think it's worse to have a mix of constructions—if they all follow the same format (e.g. Recipes using _____), then they will be automatically sorted alphabetically without any further fiddling. Regarding Category:Cake recipes, I anticipate it will actually be beneficial to create "Recipes for cake" and "Recipes using cake", since some recipes call for cake as an ingredient, while others are recipes for making cake itself. And even if that weren't the case, I don't see a huge issue with the change in naming—for example, I don't see much of a downside to changing "Sushi recipes" to "Recipes for sushi". But, I want to make sure I understand your perspective. Cheers —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 19:50, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Hideroot in indices

Migrating discussion here from User talk:MediaKyle#Hideroot Query. Original thread reads:

Hi @MediaKyle! Is there a reason you've been editing the recipe indices to hide the root? I like to keep it there so that the index is collapsible if desired and so there's a link to the category page in case someone wants to click through there. —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 23:51, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

Hi @Kittycataclysm, thanks for reaching out. My rationale for hiding the root was that it causes the layout of the list to become misaligned, and there's not much of a reason to have the root there if all the pages are already displayed nicely in a list, with the prefixes hidden. It's much easier to browse through the recipes in a list without prefixes, versus the categories in which there's a lot of visual clutter. Does that make sense do you think? MediaKyle (discuss • contribs) 23:54, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

I definitely agree that hiding the prefixes is a good idea; let me take a quick look at the formatting difference when hiding the root to see if I can understand what you mean. —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 23:58, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

It moves the first column to the right when you add the root, maybe 30 pixels or so. Furthermore, in my opinion, categories are more meant for us as editors than the reader. We don't want to direct readers towards the clunky categories, it's preferable to have clean navigation systems on the pages themselves. Same rationale for navboxes on Wikipedia. It'll look better once we subcategorize all the recipes anyways. MediaKyle (discuss • contribs) 00:05, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

Circling back around to this. From my perspective, the benefit of removing those few pixels and characters doesn't outweigh the negative impact of removing the root—to me, having the root doesn't make the navigation perceptibly less clean, but it does make navigation more difficult. I personally regularly use the root link when navigating around, and I do think it's important to have the entire index be collapsible under the root for maximal reader customization. So, I overall would prefer to keep the root. Cheers —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 19:31, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

I was thinking about it, and I wonder if maybe a situational approach would work for this. For long pages with multiple categorytrees, it would make sense to leave the root so that the sections are collapsible, in order to make it easier for folks to browse the recipes they're looking for. But as far as pages with only one categorytree, I don't think keeping the root is necessary, whereas once all of the recipes are subcategorized the root isn't really useful for navigating anyways. I think the biggest thing to keep in mind when developing these sorts of things is to try to put yourself in the shoes of the reader who knows nothing of MediaWiki and just wants to make an apple pie; I don't think adding the ambiguity of a link to a category is beneficial to them, and also provides another opportunity to misclick on mobile. I haven't looked to see what the cookbook is like on mobile now, but that's going to have to be a priority as well. I imagine you're like me and always go on wikis on the computer, but for some reason a large portion of wiki readers use mobile, so we have to account for that too. Also, I think the top-level root categories should really be like Wikipedia's topic categories, they should only consist of subcategories. MediaKyle (discuss • contribs) 11:15, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

—Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 23:20, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

@MediaKyle How about we give the hideroot a trial period of sorts? Meaning, we don't immediately go back and retroactively change all the existing instances. But, I'll start using that parameter as I move forward and create new indices as part of my content improvement. If it seemed to be working well in various use cases, we could start making the retroactive changes. I'd just prefer to feel it out in real-time and in context of usage rather than doing a huge bulk change. —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 20:16, 5 March 2025 (UTC)